


Stalemate

by Trismegistus (Lebateleur)



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Mind Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-31
Updated: 2004-10-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22233454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lebateleur/pseuds/Trismegistus
Summary: 裏と裏と裏と考えていくときりがない。。。Spoilers up through Page 25.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Stalemate

He's gnawed the skin off of the tip of his thumb. That and the shaking are the only visible signals of his distress. The shaking is worse than the bloody thumb; it rattles the cot and the chains that bind his arms and legs together and then to the floor. It isn't due to caffeine or sugar withdrawal. Light is not cruel; he sees to it that L has all the cake and coffee he could ever want.

Light is certain that L is raging, although L offers little in the way of proof. Light has only ever seen L display one emotion - determination. That emotion can only have been frustrated by the long days and nights spent in confinement; this is something which Light understands only too well, having undergone it once himself. 

"I will see you hung," L vows to the cameras Light keeps permanently trained on him. 

"No, I'll see you hung," Light vows back, "as soon as I discover how you're doing it." 

L leaps from his cot and lunges for the camera, but the chains prevent him from getting anywhere close. Light is reminded once again that L is neither as clumsy nor as awkward as he looks - that his clumsiness was just an act. 

As everything L has claimed to be was just an act. 

That revelation had come to Light far too belatedly, especially considering how obvious it should have been. Light blames himself; he's smart enough not to have fallen under Kira's spell, but he did anyway. He'd known from the outset that Kira was as intelligent and resourceful as a criminal could be; not someone to be underestimated. What Light hadn't counted on was that he would be so charismatic. 

L doesn't immediately strike one as charismatic, but he undeniably is - so charismatic that Light was willing to go to prison for him to prove his innocence, that Light's father was willing to risk his own life to prove his son's innocence, and that neither of them ever questioned these orders of L's, not even for a second. 

L, who is without a doubt Kira, obviously possesses some sort of mental power which he uses to make rational people like Light, like his father, do his bidding without question. Power that he can still use to manipulate the other Kiras from his prison cell, because the killings have not stopped since Light imprisoned L, and every time Light finds another obituary in the newspaper, sees another police report on the evening news, he knows that he is in some way responsible for these deaths, for his inability to stop L from committing more murders. It is a heavy knowledge to bear, and one that grows heavier yet with each new death. 

Light watches L through the TV monitors as he perches once more on the edge of his cot, accompanied by the rattling of his chains as he shakes, and even now Light can't help but think, _This is not what Kira should look like._

Light is sickeningly grateful that he's learned to resist whatever power L possesses, because as the situation currently stands, he's the only person who can bring L to justice. Even Light's own father, who is his strongest ally, is still at best only half convinced. 

"Dad, _listen,_ " Light had pleaded over and over. "Kira had to know we would do whatever it took to find him, and so he did the only thing he could - he came to us first, pretending to look for Kira too. And we believed him!" 

Light could picture the expression of complete disbelief on his father's face, though of course he couldn't see it over the phone. 

"Kira wouldn't do that, Light," his father had said. 

"Do _what?_ " Light hissed, frantic that his father get to the point, because the chances to make these phone calls came few and far between, and each second was precious. 

"Tell the police exactly how he's doing it! L is the only one among us who's able to get inside Kira's head. This investigation would have stalled long before if it weren't for the help he's given us. Why, if L was the real killer, would he do that?" 

"But don't you see?" Light whispered. "That's the only thing he could do! That's how he's thrown us off his trail - pretending that no one wants to catch Kira as badly as he does. _And it's worked!_ He lies to us, keeps us one step behind him, and we're _grateful_ for it!" 

"Light, are you asking me to believe this? Even _if_ L were Kira," his father punctuated this statement with a bark of bitter laughter, "even _if_ L were Kira, that Kira would cooperate with the police all along? That he would voluntarily tell us everything he's thinking, how he's doing it?" 

" _Yes!_ " Light hissed. 

There was an interminable pause before his father spoke again. "Light, I know you've helped us to solve cases before, and perhaps that's something I should never have allowed you to do. But this theory is just so wild that even I--" 

"Look, Dad, just think about it, okay?" he whispered. "I have to go." And with that he had cut the connection and slid the phone back into its hiding place in the ventilation duct with sweaty, shaking fingers. 

He'd been loath to end the conversation at such a critical point, but he didn't have a moment to spare - the brief minutes when he was unchained from L's wrist to bathe and use the toilet were the only time he had in which to contact his father away from L's ever present observation. It had taken untold scheming to get ahold of a contraband cell phone and smuggle it into the bathroom, and it took even more untold scheming to get his father out of L's presence during the few moments when Light was able to call him. 

But he managed it. He had to. It was absolutely necessary that he do so, in order to stop Kira, and so he believed that he could do it. As he had to believe that he could make his father see reason. 

L is Kira. It was so obvious. _He had to make his father see._

And eventually, his father had seen. 

It was disgusting how confident L had been that none of them would see through his lies. So confident that he never suspected what was happening when Light, his father, and Matsuda had led him down to the cells he'd constructed in the basement of his own compound, never suspected a thing until he was safely locked away in the prison he'd built with his own money. 

Or perhaps not so safely. He is still killing people, after all. As if Light could ever forget that fact. 

"I'll see you hung," he says again, to himself, although L surely hears him over the microphone. L's huge, unblinking eyes stare fixedly at the cameras, and Light is struck by the sudden, all too real sensation that L is looking directly _at him,_ through the hundreds of feet of concrete and steel girding that separate them from one other. 

Without thinking he finds himself exiting the control room, punching the numbers into the elevator by instinct, the doors closing, the cables and pulleys moving, carrying him down to the subbasement and Kira. 

L is waiting for him when the doors open, a strange, burning hunger in his eyes. 

Light summons forth his blandest, most impassive expression, and strides out of the elevator to the foot of L's cell. 

"Why don't you just do it?" he demands. "Why not just kill me? You know my name. You know my face. Just do it!" 

The _something_ in L's crazed, glowing eyes never wavers. 

Light laughs. "Kill me, kill my father, my family. Kill Matsuda, Mogi, every officer in the division. You want to, don't you?" He can no longer hold L's gaze, but he keeps talking all the same. 

"But you can't. You've realised, you bastard. Making you kill us is the only way we can prove that you're the killer. So you won't do it, because you don't know who else we might have told about you. 

"And I can't kill you until I learn how you're doing it," he admits. 

_I can't kill you until I learn, because if I don't find out how you're doing it, you son of a bitch, I'll never learn how the other Kiras are doing it, and I'll never be able to stop the rest of them._

Light has caged L's body within this prison, but in all other respects, it's L who's caged him. 

L - Kira - speaks, and the emotionless steadiness of his voice infuriates Light. 

"I admire you, Light-kun. I'd thought it all along: aren't you Kira, after all? But I underestimated you, in the end." 

"Stop it," he whispers through clenched teeth. "No more mind games. You can't fool me any longer." But L is so convincing, makes it all sound so reasonable, that a tiny little voice in Light's head is still insisting, even now: _what if L really_ isn't _Kira?_

L-- no, _Kira_ \- smiles. "I thought for certain that you wouldn't move against me until you knew my name, and as long as I could keep that from you, I would be safe. I never imagined that you would use my own allies against me. That Kira himself would convince them that _I_ was _you._ " 

"Shut up!" Light says. Of course it's backwards - _L_ is Kira, who had pretended to be the detective chasing Kira, and not the other way around. Light knows the truth and it still makes his head spin, this web L has spun and the conviction with which L believes his own lies. 

And this is why Light no longer allows his father or Matsuda to come anywhere near L, because L still might be able to convince them, even though they know the truth now. 

Sometimes, Light feels that L could still convince _him_ , and Light is the one who saw through his lies in the first place. 

"When I get out of this cell I will see you _hung,_ " L vows. His voice is the same as always: soft and bland. But Light is not fooled for a second. L is deadly serious. 

Well, so is he, and the only reason he will ever let L out of this cell is so that L can be escorted to his execution. Light puts his face to the bars and tells L as much. L smiles, puts his own face to the bars and curls his hands over Light's, which are clenched around the grating. 

"In that case, I'll make sure I get out before you have the chance," says L. 

"Over my dead body," Light vows through smiling lips, and on that point at least, they are agreed.


End file.
